Sinistre
by skywalker05
Summary: Short stories about Darth Maul's life and training prior to TPM. Rated for violence. Updated very sporadically. Chapter 15: On a trip to Utapau, a teenage Maul faces off against that planet's fierce predators, with the help of a dragonmount.
1. The Manipulated Generation

_Author's Note: Formerly, this fic has been called 'Sith Training Chronicles' and "Darth Maul: Dark Life'. It has been a challenge to find a truly appropriate appellation. Each chapter is a stand-alone story, although the first and second are connected in that the second occurs immediately after the first. At the end of chapter 9, there is a time line roughly explaining where each stands in relation to its fellows, in case you get confused. _

_Author's Note from June 2009-- I can no longer guarantee the quality of some of the older of these stories. However, this collection has become something of a basis for my fanon view of Maul, something I come back to when writing him.  
_

* * *

Nightside Coruscant. Traffic streamed up and out of the gravity well into space where sun and city-light reflections of orange and silver faded away as the great orbital mirrors turned. Countless unplotted dramas played out, but the feeling in the mind of most was content. It was a peaceful time in the Republic.

Not so for the Works. Like a swath of stain in the population center of the galaxy's capital there was this ruined place, where assembly plants and office towers long ago abandoned were left on their own to rot, rust, and sink into the bedrock with the weight of thousands of floors. The air tasted like dirt, smoke, and metal or blood.

At a crossroads in these desperate straits, Sheik Montanya stood with a bulky sensor in her hand, watching for the signal lights of high-level life instead of rats and mutants. She was a green-skinned Twi'lek, but this fact was covered by a portable holoprojector that gave the illusion of a black-haired human female, still as lithe and tall as reality, dressed in a brownish coverall. The theory was that young Twi'leks, members of the Bounty Hunter's Guild or no, were, in places like this, apt to be dragged off into dark corners by slavers or worse.

Jant said she was being paranoid. Montanya replied that she was the leader of the team, so she would look like whatever she liked.

And this team was good. In the field now, they listened and obeyed perfectly but were smart enough to ensure they'd all live if orders could not be given. Montanya had first told them to split up, Wookiee twins Tchyryk and Morrbacca going on ahead while Montanya, human Jant Urn, and handsome Zabrak Zane Nu-Dallis remaining to try to sight their quarry.

The white blip appeared.

Montanya aligned her eyes with the tracker's indication. "Got him. Come on."

There was a conduit between two rusted, black buildings, a massive pipe that had once carried water or coolth or plasma. The Sith apprentice crouched on top of it, perfectly balanced, hooded and cloaked, all potential and quiet fury.

He could see them now. One human one Zabrak one...Twi'lek. The apprentice knew the mind-signature of those beings whose brains extended into their head-tails. If they were like the Wookiees, they would be safe to face in the group. Theirs were only the reflexes of the biological.

The drop was about eight feet. He fell fast.

The human brought up a weapon first, a long carbon blaster. The Sith took a step from where he had landed, gripped the barrel of the blaster with two hands, pivoted, and broke the human's jaw with his heel. The human's head snapped back. The Sith put his foot down, then shot the Twi'lek in the shoulder with the blaster he had pulled from her partner's immediately limp hands. Sparks would be showering over her delicate lekku; she screamed in the back of her throat.

As she bared her teeth the one now behind the Sith--Zabrak--had two knives held low, ready for a strike to the spine that would paralyze the Sith and veritably short-circuit the nerves clustered at the back of his neck. The Force shattered the bounty hunter against the near wall. Human lurched to his feet with his twisted mouth rimmed red with his blood but pulling a cryoknife from a sheath by his right elbow. The Sith registered this in the same real-time slowness that allowed him to move between movements, plan between breaths. He did not need that skill now. Twi'lek had leapt to the aid of Zabrak.

Fury; fed by adrenaline, battlelust, primal _fight _where there was no other option. The Sith closed a gloved hand over the hilt of his lightsaber and brought it flaring up in the teras kasi form Rising Sandpanther, a liquid move that tore into Human from left wrist to right shoulder. Ozone and the quick stench of burnt skin joined the acid in the air.

Montanya dropped to her knees next to Zane, the pain in her shoulder and lek eating into her but she couldn't let it touch her, couldn't see--Zane's face completely slack. The wrist she found herself touching as gently as she could felt broken but worse, bones shattered by when his hand struck immovable metal--Montanya jerked away, feeling tears sting behind her eyes.

She'd never told him...

The adversary in black turned toward her, orangeish eyes both so focused and so...unseeing. Unseeing of any emotion but rage. The markings covering his face were not natural to Zabraks--she could see the hooked horns, like Zane's but rearranged--though they matched this one, augmented him.

Montanya shuddered out terror and raised her long vibroknife while taking Zane's hold-out blaster from the side pocket of his vest. It was the last time she would touch him...

The red swordblade--some perverted form of lightsaber? This was no Jedi!--thrummed over the killer's left shoulder and slashed open the wall behind her, hissing. She rolled, tucking her lekku against her back and keeping the hip the holoprojector clung to from being crushed against the grimy ground. She came up with the little blaster in one hand and her vibro in the other, firing fast as her shaking fingers could pull the trigger.

There was a nexu, one of the vicious creatures of Cholganna, slinking along in the darkness of the walls where no passing lights from starships or the area's broken and random illumination could help the eyes. It must have been called by the scent of blood, as the Sith had predicted it would be. Kill two birds with one blade.

The Sith deflected each blaster bolt with precision borne of dark clarity, keeping them away from the woman. He summoned the Force and flung her a meter into the synthetic ground. She was stunned for a second, her lekku trapped between the floor and her own weight. He could see the green head-tails draped around her neck when the nexu powered forward and stepped on the holoprojector. With persuasion that slipped into its mind, it killed her quickly and crouched on top of the body, skittering around like an insect to turn four eyes on the Sith.

Darth Sidious stood on an uplifted balcony and looked down at his creation.

All this world was his. The alleys of The Works were claimed by none else, and the people below were pawns in his great game...

five bounty hunters, numbers taken down to one. They had taken a job to kill when their real purpose was to die.

a nexu, thrown into the gears of the great machine to make things interesting, a whim, a so expensive toy.

and the apprentice, Sidious' hands when his was the body of an old man, and sometimes, of a trusted traitor.

The plans had grown like the young trees on Naboo; they would bend, make their noise in the wind, and again return to their grand state. This manipulated generation, this scheme fueled by the Darkness, could weather any storm.

And if it did not, there was always a new sapling ready to be planted, a new apprentice.

The apprentice paced toward the nexu, matching his wide, fiery stare to the slitted blue of the animal's double eyes. The nexu's gaze flicked away, but it was predator, and under its claws ran blood. It leapt. Two steps; one slow, so controlled, and then the Sith drew his lightsaber in a movement quick as shadow-flicker that combined the next step into the red blade coming down across the nexu's neck with signature _thrumm_. The felinoid fell against the Sith's feet. He stepped over it and the Twi'lek, drawing the lightsaber back into nothingness, looking back only to see if the hunters of men had anything he needed. There was nothing obvious, for Darth Sidious provided. The apprentice faded into anonymous streets. He had overestimated the challenge of the return to Coruscant; he felt now rather relaxed from his first mission offplanet alone. He expected no reward for his achievement save his Master's approval and the return to familiar territory. The new-inked skin across his chest and shoulders had lost its companion pain.


	2. Naming

II

Darth Sidious watched his apprentice climb the metal flights of stairs up into the tallest monad in the Works. He knew that the last few weeks had eaten away at the Zabrak, body and mind, and that what would be left after a day or so of recuperation and light work would be the steel-hard skeleton of an unmatchable dark warrior. He felt proud, but it was the pride of one whose podracer or starship had just won a race or a dogfight, not the pride of one whose son or friend had made those acheivements in conjunction with the machine. Sidious thought that maybe one day he could find an accomplice he could call his near-equal in Force prowess or vision, but that future was far and, at the moment, unneeded.

The young Sith finished the climb and stood in front of Sidious looking outwardly fresh, then dropped to his knees at the Sith Lord's shadow.

"My Master." The Zabrak had aquired a clipped Coruscanti accent. "The mission is completed."

"Good, good. Rise, my apprentice. Your work will not go unrewarded." Of course, the apprentice did not know that the majority of the difficulties of his simple mission had been architected by his Master, but Sidious did not find it in his purposes to tell the Zabrak that if he had survived them. Going across the galaxy and sending a covert message from a obscure, unlocated Holonet station there had been enough of a challenge in intuition, logic, sense and power without bounty hunters and troublemakers of various stations (some of which simply could not be killed), machine trouble, general confusion, and a nexu.

The Zabrak flowed to his feet again as Sidious moved off. The apprentice's boots clunked on the hard floor, while Sidious manipulated atoms to muffle his own steps. It never hurt to keep your subordinates in a little awe, a little fear and healthy ignorance.

The veritable-center of the Works had no designated meeting places; the steel towers were jungle, the lair-places uncountable and stability the minority. The least guarantee that the hallways would, if you walked them twice, turn you out in the same place both times was reassurance enough for someone as used to the city as Sidious's apprentice. He knew these dark hallways and rusting buildings well, and saw how already his kind had made their mark on the world. He thought as he walked of his movements, of the weariness and adjustments of his body, but not even or eventual relaxation.

Lord Sidious brought him to a room with flat rocks set into the high, thin walls, a room where the cloaked men cast long shadows. It had a black stone table raised on a black stone dias, and one low secondary door. Sidious swept slowly onto the raised section, gesturing for his apprentice to kneel. The Zabrak settled his weight with a sigh he could feel around his lips, but made no sound. The wide, fiery eyes focused on his master.

Sidious paced. "So, your mission is completed."

"Yes, Master."

"You have reached my expectations." Pause. "The dark lord Darth Bane began our Sith tradition four thousand years ago. Now at least we near his ardent goal." His voice was reedy, deep now and excited. "I name you Darth Maul, apprentice of the Sith."

The apprentice had waited for his naming with passive anticipation. He tried the name out to himself, tasted it in his mind, and it did not mean himself--not yet. It would and it was good, because it had been given to him by Lord Siidous. He was truely Sith now, with a name to match their dark title! "Thank you, my Master." The apprentice bowed lower. His mouth did not know to smile, but his eyes did.


	3. One Day

_I don't particularly like the outcome of this one, but it is rather a 'typical day in the life of a Sith.' Cooler stuff upcoming, I promise. _

III

Darth Maul dreamt of water, like a whirlwind that he walked through. Cold water slipped down the back of his right hand and between his fingers, then he emerged from the silent storm and stood on a black cliff, very real, and above he could see a sun with material being torn from it into a circling disk. The black hole beside the star was invisible, shrouded. Darth Maul squinted, trying to focus, but his concentration slid off it as did his gaze, and sleep threatened to return.

There was more, vivid half-scenes of hunting as a manka cat such as that which featured in his most recent teras kasi kata, one had he not yet demonstrated to his master. He awoke in the metallic darkness of his quarters, not so different from the metallic darkness of the varied ships he had used in his trek around the galaxy. He breathed in energy and awareness, and foresaw that he would spend the morning alone.

He stretched slowly in a room a level above that where he slept, with cracked windows looking out on orange-washed cityscape. Maul wore black boots of tough, soft leather shaped by metal and dark gray pants of a cool cloth, with his staff lightsaber across the room floating. This was a show and an exercise of Force-body coordination; he could go through pure physical fighting techniques while sustaining a grip on the lightsaber. He couldn't do two Force-powers at one time, yet, and impatience twisted his expression.

Darth Sidious came by in the afternoon. Darth Maul watched the hooded figure on a floating platform from a computer where he studied the various planets. Sidious expected him in the combat square, so he turned and headed toward it, leaving neon sphere specters behind.

He showed the manka kata, first slow and controlled and then up to speed with killing energy. Maul felt strong, comfortable, revigorated. He finished before Sidious, coming out of a simple roll, and then bowed the Sith Master. Anger out of the past radiated off of Sidious; one of his outside-world plans gone wrong?

"Your progress in teras kasi has come extraordinarily, Darth Maul." His Master croaked. "No common street fight fighter could defeat you. But a youngling Jedi _could_." Sidious's mouth twisted. The Force rose up from its resting state and menaced Darth Maul so that he could not move, just angrily quivered, deprived of his advantage.

And then he relaxed, because if Sidious chose to kill him then that was as it should be.

"You are too arrogant, my young apprentice. You are too impatient, too proud, unwilling to surrender enough to the Force to understand it and the then control it." Pain leaked through psychic energy. "Spend some of your time _thinking_, Darth Maul. Meditate on this." Sidious turned away and climbed clanging stairs.

Darth maul had been caught up in the words and in his own examining of inner Force, so when Sidious belatedly released his Force-hold Maul fell, got one ankle under him wrong and had to compensate with his hands, then sat for a moment and glowered as streams of anger and clumsy embarrassment ran up and under the coiled muscles of his arms.


	4. Black Sun

_The Black Sun plot was created and implemented by Dark Horse Comics artists and writers Ron Marz, Jan Duursema, and Dave McCraig for the comic simply entitled "Darth Maul". It's their fault._

* * *

IV

Darth Sidious, guised as benevolent Chancellor Palpatine, thought about the mission on which he had last sent his eager apprentice. Maul, he thought, was the lucky one. Anyone and everyone the Zabrak disliked or needed out of the way he could kill outright, and if he was found out than he was just another crazed alien with a grudge, stalking the underbelly of the galaxy. Sidious had to deal with the people he manipulated while they were alive.

"We've reached the Senate Plaza, Chancellor." The pilot stood at the door of Palpatine's landed hoverbus.

"Thank you." said Sidious. He lifted himself from a comfortable couch and slowly walked to the stairs and his waiting contingent of guards.

_"Plans for the blockade of Naboo are in place. The trade federation will prove to be a useful pawn to us...we must have no interference from other sources."_

_"I want you to strike at the heart of Black Sun. It is a vast criminal syndicate... its influence felt on every planet from the Core Worlds to the Outer Rim. Black Sun has existed for hundreds of years...the ignorant even call it the most powerful force in the known universe."_

The sign over the grubby restaurant said Thranta's Clipped Wing in temperamental neon. Darth Maul, pondering his Master's words, walked the streets casually, wearing black and a loose, dark green tunic. His eyes flicked to the sign with the familiar name. People, naive and skillless, angrily crowded out of his way as Maul shoved open the malfunctioning door to the Thranta's.

The place was dim, neat, full of the smell of smoke. Bar all along the right wall, wooden benches at strategic positions around the metal tables. The Force was passive, useless, around emotions from the patrons. Maul did not concern himself with thinking of them, though he might in the quiet future. Gazes slid away from him. The feared him, and Maul reveled in that.

His contact was human, well into her adult years, and obviously not expecting the lithe Zabrak who sat across from her, because she pulled a BlasTach HSB-200 from the hover-chair where she sat, one leg wrapped in bandage. "You're not who I'm waiting for. Where is the wizard?"

Maul pulled the blaster out of her hand to his and dropped it on the table. "I am Lord Sidious's apprentice. Where is the Black Sun base?"

A droid waitress trundled to the end of the table. "Your orders."

"Blue tea." She the woman contact.

Maul responded, "Reek steak. Leave the blood."

"Not too discreet, are you?" The woman grumbled as the droid zipped away. But her hands were shaking. "I know a station--a fixed space station on the edge of the Koornacht cluster. It's called Burnt Moon. Somewhere in the Deimos system."

"Good." That was enough. Maul turned his attention to his impending food. The woman's hoverchair whined as it rose up, rushing, then hesitated. Maul looked up, knowing she would not get his attention through bravery. When he gave her a chance, just by meeting her eyes with littlest force, the words spilled out of her.

"Don't kill my son! Please--he only want in for the money. Please--don't kill him."

Darth Maul thought, _I will kill whoever comes after me, in the crowds Black Sun will be. _He said nothing, though, and she left.

Two Black Sun guards saw something rushing across the water toward the dock where they stood.

"Hey, see that?"

"See what?"

"That . What you think it is?"

"Dunno. Shoot it anyway."

They shot. There was a shriek. Darth Maul, crouched over the curved rim of his speeder, ignited the long blades of his lightsaber and removed their heads as he went by.

"One! There's only _one!_"

There were fifty, one hundred, soldiers of Black Sun trained in illicit and conventional warcraft, and fear rippled through them at one man beginning to plow through their ranks with some deadly mutation of a lightsaber. Jedi's legend resurfaced in so many minds; one out of twenty had seen a mystic-warrior of the Force at work. None of them believed entirely in their own bravery faced with one man against their masses, who apparently held no reservations.

He did not need their fear, but he took it and fed them with it, used it as a weapon with arcane skill.

Darth Maul had leapt from the speeder that carried him over a sea of Ralltiir to this base, leapt into clothing, skin, scales, fur and weapons Shistavanen, Weequay, human, Nikto they surrounded him, and every move of their defense or attack was an opening for the Sith because he moved between movements, breathed between breaths. Each step, twist, thought brought death. The apprentice's world filled up with the dark side and easy combat. A blaster bolt screamed beside him. He pinwheeled the lightsaber, sent the shot back to its originator, and stabbed the lower blade into a creature he had kicked down a moment before. Beings fell off the thin sides of the protective catwalk fronting the main building. Ozone, blood, sweat filled the air. Darth Maul's face had become a devilish mask of shining eyes and stained teeth, like a hunting beast, like a study in death.

He cut the hands from a man hanging from the catwalk, and kicked in the face of some feline being--Cathar--then stabbed into it. Retracted the lightsaber. Walked up the stairs at the other end of the catwalk, where blaster-smoke rose into blue shadow and light. The air was clear, and the apprentice took one breath to equalize his system again, and relaxed.

After a vaulted hallway there was a man hiding behind a column in an open place, a man with a blaster, an in-case. Darth Maul walked by. The blaster cocked next to his left ear, and he looked at the man with a downcast annoyance before raising a hand and quickly, violently closing the man's throat. He walked on. The human fell and struggled, as Maul walked, free hand fisted, further into the base. When the human did not move any longer, Maul relaxed again.

The eight Vigo's bodyguards had been fun, except those reptilian things that fought better by digging in razor claws and handing on than the rest had with modern weapons. They had torn his cloak and shirt to shreds, but had been easy enough to kill when you got them in front of you. The Vigos had been terrified, easy, and stupidly unarmed. The Nightsister gave a challenge, but he had faced lightning before. The servant had been boring. The head of Black Sun was a tall, blonde-haired human who seemed to want to talk, and because he was the last Darth Maul let him. He had run for a long time, and did not hold a visible weapon with his ornate cloak and clothing.

"You're going to kill me."

"Yes."

"It was unthinkable that one man would throw himself against Black Sun, and yet you've single-handily crippled us. I could not have imagined anything like you."

"There is one other like me. My Master."

"'Always two. A master and an apprentice.' Obvious now, isn't it? I've heard the legends. I was to be a Jedi, you know. Alexi Garyn, Jedi Knight. That was my dream. I showed a sensitivity to the Force when I was young, not young enough. So I chose another path. So the Sith really do exist."

He was going to be killed in a matter of minutes. He was to be Jedi! 'We always have." Darth Maul growled, expressionless. "We always will."

"Why now? Why reveal yourselves now?"

"It is our time. After centuries of waiting, the galaxy will be ours." Was that verbatim, from Sidious?

False calm! Duplicitous _Jedi! _"Once Black Sun is out of your way!" Quicker than the apprentice could react, Alexi of Black Sun brought a cortosis knife slashing across Maul's abdomen and chest. Pain and blood emerged and were ignored.

Maul tore the knife from the human's hand, and leapt for him, grabbed his throat, threw both of them into the sea where it had become a river below the station. He tasted water, but saw only the human's shock and tightened his hand, fell, shoved the Vigo against the ground. Alexi's face grew slack and ugly, his eyes staring. Darth Maul licked salt from his lips and managed to ignore the increasing pain of the knife wound. He stood up, dripping, and walked to the shore, to return to his speeder bike and then starship through lifeless corridors.


	5. First Kill

_seven years earlier_

Chapter IV: First Kill

The whip singed the air.

The Sith apprentice jumped it, ducked it, stepped in toward Sidious. The lightwhip painted a white web of defense inches from the apprentice's face. He stepped back, jammed the terminal curve of his lightsaber to where the whip's surface would be _now_. It cought, sparked. It took a split second for the apprentice's reflexes to take that advantage–in which a loop of the whip came around toward his straining arms, so he disengaged from the tangle and stepped away while catching the loop with diagonal lightsaber, gnashing his teeth and pulling anger down around his eyes as he snarled. Darth Sidious had not moved. The apprentice's frustration made the world into red-rimmed lines of energy and power, cause and effect.

The young Sith feinted a strike up high, then cut low left. Sidious responded with the whip, his own face twisted with concentration, the Force humming. The apprentice kicked at the Master's hands on the whip, then at the man's stomach.

Electric coils settled around the apprentice's leg. He snapped back, but the coils injected immediate pain into him that shivered and jolted him farther away, back, breath catching. Sidious switched the whip off, turning it into a twined cord of metal. The shock turned to burning in the apprentice's leg.

He surged up, but then knew that Sidious had other things on his mind and he sunk down again now keeping as much weight as he could back toward his arms. He fiercely wished to continue the fight as they usually would, to take the searing pain and use it, instead of being so debilitated as to site and struggle with emotionless Force-ability to heal his protesting body.

* * *

Danl Faallic was a Gluas'sa Nikto, intelligent, pale of skin, noseless, pedantic. The Works had been his for a while. His father's factory was now the self-titled Lord Sidious' domain. There had been debts involved for Faallic to sell land on Coruscant to someone who would not give clear identification, debt to a whole Kadas'sa Nikto clan. He had saved himself though, and when he commed Sidious to request a return-resale of the property then the human had asked that they speak on site.

Danl parked his speeder beside an arched balcony in the beginning of night and walked dim but well-kept hallways as per direction. He found the old man sitting on a ledge, neatly dressed. A step down from the hall that lead to this place there was an empty room, and a child dressed in black sitting on the floor. The youngling was certainly not Sidious'; it was of a species with small horns and black skin as far as Danl could see. He was stoicly playing with something on the floor.

"Good evening." Sidious rose, his voice warm.

"Evening."

With a strange dexterity the human spoke before and as Danl could begin some polite small talk. "You have been part of something grand, Danl Faallic. Your small support has greatly aided me." The child was coming up the stair. His skin was only striped black, with base red on his face and tan on his neck and chest beneath a cocky open cloak. His eyes too were arrogant, an ugly blue-black color flecked with orange and muddy gold.

Danl had just sucked air into his tubes to say something that would get to the point when Sidious spoke again, continuing his speil.

"Your problem is going to be solved, my alien friend. Leave your spawn the credits you've finally made."

Danl did not carry a weapon, because the places of the galaxy in which he did business were safe. The child came forward. He had been holding a whip with thin metal filament, and a thick handle, which when switched on bloomed into electricity and moved of its own accord. Danl met Sidious' eyes and the human turned away. Danl started to retreat with Sidious' words still sinking in. The whip flicked before him than closer, pain was first dull and deep, then electric and spreading. Danl's death was full of quick fear.

Darth Sidious radiated anger, left over anger only slightly sated by the Nikto's simple demise. The apprentice was not satisfied either, but he had expected it. Sidious' jarring mental command had been quick and uncomplicated.

Sidious said "Dispose of its body." and crept into the shadows.


	6. Vision of a Jedi

_A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, completely unconnected to anything else you've read so far...this chapter and the one after were directly inspired and/or betawritten by Sar Sha. She too has fallen under the spell of adoring Jan Duursema's work. Thus the dramatic smoke._

VI: Vision of a Jedi

* * *

Blaster shots ricocheted dangerously through the room, cramped as it was with computers and shelves. Darth Maul pounced at the Black Sun record-keeper and severed its carapace with a single swipe of his lightsaber. Its body collapsed on the chair before the main, important console; blaster bolts continued to bounce around the shielded place and generate smoke before dying into harmless, barely noticeable light. Maul kept his eyes on them lest one strike some suspicious chemical stored in the flagons and beakers capped around the shelves. Seemed the insectoid record-keeper's second hobby was either chemistry or liquid narcotics.

Maul deactivated his lightsaber and stepped carefully to the main computer where Vigos' names and locations would be stored, so that the Sith could pinpoint them to lop the head off of the organization.

He fell to his knees on the second step. Heightened senses sprang to the rescue of voluntary control–though his body grew increasingly weak and unmoving, Maul saw the tiny stream of greenish mist seeping from behind a desk just to his right, and the shattered bottle above it.

In another breath he crumpled backward and into unconsciousness.

**B**lurrily but immediately he recognized the place his addled mind took him through next as some past version of the Jedi Temple, stained at the edges as if he watched it on an old holoprojector. He struggled to his feet, unable as if in a dream to totally feel his own body. A tranquil coral-orange hallway stretched out before him with silence laid over it, and the Force boiling inside him ran counter to its serenity.

He pressed a gloved hand against the wall nearby and it passed through, almost invisible where the solids touched. He clenched his fist and rattled the structure with the Force _–rattled the joists with the Force– _nothing happened.

Growling with distaste and confusion, Maul took a few cautious steps toward the nearest feature of the hallway, a corner whose adjacent corridor ran parallel to the one the Sith traveled.

Footsteps appeared out of the silence, and he pulled back.

Without Force warning and strangely disconnected to the distance implied from the sound of their steps, four people in Jedi robes turned the corner and walked straight toward him.

Maul moved into a catstance and pulled his weapon out. He tried to shout something, not being sure what, and could not make a sound.

Not his footsteps, not his blades made a sound–the Jedi walked past, talking and gesturing lightly.

Maul moved into step with them and swept his lightsaber through the nearest at the waist, clipping the next at the hand. No effect; perhaps a whisp of smoke.

Maul tried to scream again, tried to slam his fist through the nearest's head, and could not effect the world-through-a-lens as if he stood and paced behind glass.

He kept step and studied them. Three humanoids and a Filordus male, a orange-skinned short thing with six limbs. The others were one human male, clean-shaven and thin with short gold-red hair; one Iridonian Zabrak male, bald, wearing sleeveless robes, his face marked with only one jagged tattoo from the left ear to the lips; one Togrunta female with graceful bearing and her red-skinned hand hovering near her lightsaber.

"Form four has its advantages." The human was saying."A balance; just what is needed in battle against a Force-strong opponent."

The Togrunta leaned forward across the Zabrak Jedi's field of view to reply. "But we're not going to be battling any Sith! Concentrate on meditation and peace, my friends."

The human muttered, "I don't believe the Sith exist. Not any more."

"I think they may." The Zabrak spoke up in a grim tone Maul knew to be very similar to his own. Then the Jedi brightened; "But nowhere near us!" He flexed his bare arms as they turned to enter another room–Maul hurriedly stepped aside out of their path, though still his effects on the situation were nonexistent.

All of them entered a small room set with mats the same color as the walls in the hallway; a training floor, with round 'remote' droids and various weapons set against the walls. Each Jedi adopted a different readying activity, the Togruna settling to the floor in a pool of her cloak to meditate, the human stretching side to side, the Filordus polishing his slim silver lightsaber haft, the Zabrak drawing his own weapon and starting a slow kata in a corner. He used a staff lightsaber like Maul's, designed almost exactly the same in fact–and the Sith recognized those moves. He had designed them. The steps, the turns, each sweep of a _green _lightsaber blade could be matched by his own red in thousands of memories; Maul had _designed _that kata!

He grimaced and surged forward, irritation ignoring the impossibility of his attempts at disrupting this pastoral activity and engaging these four ripe Jedi in prize combat, but still they lived without knowledge of him. The human and the unsettlingly familiar Zabrak entered the main floor together and began to spar, relaxed. Maul stopped, entranced by the Zabrak seemingly using the Sith's own technique. Somehow watching himself duel this fellow Jedi was enthralling–and it _was_ himself. He knew every movement's intricacies with the training he had taken to learn to recognize people of various species at a single glance.

_That is me there–that is me as Jedi–this is the possible–NO! _

"Come on Obi-Wan, show me that form!" The alternate Maul swept a deft leg under the human's and stepped away from a retaliation with 'saber.

_If Lord Sidious had not found me, this could be the outcome–myself in the cradle of the enemy. _The whole Jedi Temple was distasteful, blasphemy, to him because such it had always been, such he believed with an unquestioning firmness.

"Come on!" The lightsabers crackled and hum-creaked in a lock. The Togrunta clapped.

_This weakness and complacency and complex social relationship–_

The human Obi-Wan did a quick circle parry that pushed the Zabrak Jedi down to his knees.

Darth Maul screamed, and the sound of his own voice from his own mouth screaming shocked him. He felt for a moment to be falling, through darkness out of the dreamlike state, and then was in gritty reality again with people holding him up, at shoulders and feet–

He twisted, fell, stood, slammed a punch into the nearest life-form. It recoiled with the splat of broken liquid-armor. Four Black Sun agents had been carrying him through a hallway he remembered en route to the records room; a swarthy female human, a fat Togrunta, a stooped Whiphid, and a Casaedian Zabrak. The Togrunta wore liquid-armor up to his head-tails.

Maul's lightsaber remained clutched in deathlike grip in his left hand. He raised it, loosened the stiff tendons with a thought, and stabbed the Zabrak through the chest while smiling.

**H**e returned to his ship and blasted off after deducing that the computer room had been opened up enough by his prior actions to be accessed by Sidious' outside systems. Next, to the Black Sun's planetside base of operations. He had only wanted to go inside for the fight.

**M**onths later Maul again sat at the sophisticated computer in his ship and read briefings for the mission, now helping the Trade Federation–a wanted ally, unlike Black Sun–keep control in the system Naboo. Two Jedi involved, _– good– _Master Qui-Gon Jinn and apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Maul stared at the name for a moment, dredging it up. Obi-Wan. _"Come on, Obi-Wan..." _

Maul shook his head. _Nothing. Only dreadful possibilities out of the past. _

_But Sidious has taught, "Nothing happens by accident." _


	7. Touch

STC VII

Ashura 's feet ached; the loose fabric of her costume, somewhat regal but just on the edge of edgy, began to feel like a weight so that even her ears drooped, and some perfume ran with sweat through her short fur. She had not imagined it would feel so tough to stand in front of a club and look pretty, to possibly attract younger patrons to the newly owned Outlander establishment.

A gaggle of Twi'leks coursed in the door, obviously without any help from the young Cathar standing beside it, leaning languidly out onto the sidewalk.

Some beings avoided her, many ignored her, some leered or stared for a moment, surely expecting her job to entail more than standing here and looking attractive. Her claws and the vibrodaggers hidden under her shimmery outfit were to assure that true to her moral standards it didn't. Most beings just kept walking like they did down any length of street, ignoring all the offers individuals or holo-ads presented them.

Her attention perked as a lone humanoid teen approached. He, a Zabrak she could see now with more and more intense coloring than their culture of tattoos dictated, wore black sleeveless tunic and black pants. He walked alone with an assurance and no hurry, with the rippled muscles of his arms and sleek build as testimony to his ability to protect himself.

Ashura moved slightly farther from the overhanging entrance to the Outlander Club and caught the Zabrak's eye. He hesitated and she came closer. As per tactics she coyly ran a hand across his shoulder and down the warm lines of his arm. As per tactics she planned to speak something suggesting they go to the Club..

Suddenly another man pushed in between them, someone tall and cloaked all in black. It was not unusual for beings to hide their faces–immediately Ashura moved away from them both and readied her claws.

The cloaked man croaked in an old, focused voice, "Not this one, young lady. He does not know how to respond to a gentle touch."

They melted into the crowd.


	8. Power

Eight: Power

_What is power?_

_Is it weapons, steel or lasers? _Ch'chyn wondered these things as the fencing instructor handed it and its two partners the new weapons.

No, power did not equal arms, not for any sufficiently developed species. Humans like the instructor, Verpine like Ch'chyn, Twi'lek like the man on Ch'chyn's right or Bith like the one to his left; each had in the course of their development realized with a minority exception that it was easier to farm than to hunt. Power, then, for most became the power had by homemakers.

Ch'chyn's hands trembled with nerves and excitement as the instructor put the lightsaber hilt in its green palm. Safety precautions were recited, with the fencers cradling the legendary laser-swords in their hands. Then they were given free reign of the piths, and clever Ch'chyn had never been so single-minded as it was then getting used to the new weight in its fighting stance.

**Darth** Sidious sat in a lair which was as exquisitely furnished as an office in the Senate Rotunda. His voice croaked, tones particulated like the fine cracks in transparisteel before it explodes into space. Sidious said, "What is power?"

Darth Maul knew that this was a musing comment and did not reply. He remained sitting comfortably on his knees on the floor beside his mentor, who was slowly eating fruit dipped in sugar. Maul, a lean Zabrak of indeterminate but prime age, wore one of his loose black uniforms and stared straight ahead at nothing.

Without moving a finger the old Sith lifted a fold of the black curtain across the room. Maul could sense the beings inside. He knew of beasts who fought to the death in arenas and did not mind how similar to that mien this exercise felt.

"To the death," said Sidious. Maul rose, waited a moment for further instruction and, when none came, paced across the room and past the curtain. It fell into place behind him.

Absolute darkness in the room Maul knew was a smallish warehouse-type area. Three utterly familiar sounds and blinding neon lights--snap-hiss! Then the glowstrips activated. Maul registered three opponents; bulbous-headed sallow-skinned Bith, green lightsaber in a six guard; blue Twi'lek, cerulean lightsaber held down; insectoid Verpine with two audio-sensitive antennae curving to its thin shoulders, silver lightsaber in front of its face.

Darth Maul, unarmed. Where a Jedi would have centered themself in the calm aspects of the Force, Darth Maul let rage--at the unfair match, at the killing intent uncertain in the three intruders' minds, at nothing but from a bottomless pit more useful than any weapon or reason--sweep through him and augment his awarenesses.

The three moved to flank him, their feet treading in angular fencer's steps. This also taught Maul that they assumed that the curtain was a barrier.

They hesitated to move in on him. That, thought Maul, is power. Three armed men hesitate to fight on unarmed man who shows no fear when he should.

The Twi'lek reached Maul first, from the right, with the blue lightsaber straight out and his right hand high with a glinting dagger held there. Maul stepped right and covered Twi'lek's sword hand with his own left, pressing between the knuckle-sinews enough that the lightsaber wobbled in the fencer's grip. A second later Maul reached under the assailant's fleshy head-tail and tripped the nerves there too. Twi'lek collapsed, the lightsaber falling into Maul's hand.

Just in time--Bith's blade flicked toward Maul's neck. He brought the blue lightsaber up, tip lower than the hilt. Sabers struck with the sound of shorting power lines. Maul snapped a kick up under Bith's arm in to the soft parts beneath his analog ribs. Bith doubled over and stumbled backwards. Maul took off his head in the moment of confusion.

Verpine was standing beside the curtain, silver blade held comfortably in front of it, mind skirling with evaluations. Maul sensed that this kill would not be swift. He smiled, then launched into the butterfly attack, flip-twisting around the lightsaber held loosely to his chest. The Verpine was not where the final kick landed; wisely it stepped aside. The two lightsabers met, crackling, blue and green, met again. Maul raged now. He wished to see Verpine curled like a dead, dry spider.

Verpine neatly lunged, burning into the cloth over the Sith's ribs--then Maul Force-pushed. Verpine flew through the curtain and landed with a crash as into the desk.

When Maul pressed into the office he saw Verpine with one spindly arm around Darth Sidious' neck. The old man looked pained and as frightened as his apprentice had ever seen.

"I've got my saber to his back," said Verpine, black eyes flinty. "Let me out of this hellhole alive and he lives too. Else he dies."

Verpine did have a strategic locale, with Sidious trapped between the heavy desk, the wall, and his arms. Maul could sense firm resolve from what could have been a boast.

He started forward.

Verpine said, "He's all you've got, isn't he? You've got no family, hive, litter, whatever you come from. I'll kill him if you take another step. Can't you read it in my thoughts?"

Sidious could not speak, though it looked like he was trying. Maul was surprised to know that he was too off-guard to make a command.

Maul's loyalty--not love, or familial companionship--was entirely to his Master. Despite the thousands of years of Sith history where apprentices killed their Masters and took their places, Maul knew that Sidious' plans were far too grand to be left in his own hands.

The order had been _to the death, _and the Sith Lord knew enough of the Force to foresee galactic destiny, not to mention moves in a battle against a mundane opponent.

Darth Maul was now desperate to kill Verpine.

Emotion-storm-fueled, Maul levitated his lightsaber and, pointing with both hands, drove the blue blade through the center of Sidious' chest and Verpine's core. Maul jumped on to the desk and crouched to retrieve the lightsaber and smell the death in the air beside his foe.

He sensed Sidious walk into the room just as the Sith Lord's body on the desk disappeared. Resonant laughter broke the silence. Maul moved to stand before Sidious with the blue lightsaber deactivated in his hands, not knowing whether punishment or praise was to come. Slowly the powerful rage crawled into its quiet den at the back of his mind.

**In **its last moments Ch'chyn the Verpine thought of the vicious sacrifice the orange-eyed one had made of his mentor/employer. If power was this decision, Ch'chyn would want none...

**"Ah**!" crowed the real Darth Sidious, inviting a response.

Maul chose one of his many thoughts. "Had you not the power to escape the chokehold you would not have the name of Sith Master."

Sidious smiled slowly. "Good. Good."


	9. Every Obsidian Edge

**Chapter 9**

The young man who would one day be called Darth Maul looked out over a landscape of black mountains. This was his home. His kinsmen had evolved here. It had taken his master sixteen years to allow him to set foot on Iridonia, and as he did the ground in front of him fell apart. Canine creatures with horns curving over their backs like shells, in body shaped not unlike the tuk'ata of Korriban, stood up. They had been camouflaged by the ground around the ship; their long horns connected like puzzle pieces so that when the pack lay down, it was with a bone floor over their bodies and heads. Darth Sidious stood behind his apprentice on the ramp of the small starship. At sixteen standard years of age Maul's skin was still its natural bright red. His eyes burned orange, but without most of the intensity and draw they would later gain. When his teacher placed his gnarled hand on his back and pushed, the Zabrak stumbled down the ramp.

The creatures on the ground—merks—charged as Maul's booted feet touched the ground. He jumped and somersaulted over the pack of merks which had moments before looked like a cobbled floor. It gave him a few more of their movements to watch.

When they came closer, nostrils expanding to pull the newcomer's scent and warmth out of the chill air, Maul used the Force for attack. With close-handed gestures he flung the creatures away, against the rocks, the ground, or the hot exhaust of the rising starship. Some to either side of him stood their ground. One charged, fangs agape; Maul pivoted and kicked it under the jaw so hard that the horns behind its neck splintered. He turned and backfisted another, then stepped away as the animals surged forward. Again he Force-pushed.

The merks flew back. Many of their bodies hit the sharp rocks; the others fled, silent but for their footsteps.

Maul turned away from the landing side and ascended the jumbled hill of rocks behind him, and came to a path. He walked along it. He could have been any young Zabrak wearing a black flightsuit and heavy gloves, with an alert or quizzical expression. The sun set in a pool of yellow on the jagged horizon.

Darth Maul was like this planet. Many times had he been reforged in fire: every obsidian edge sharpened, the emotions—the lives—that remained used for survival. He was a colony too, an outpost of the dark side, left over from that chaotic accretion disk, the armies of the Sith, thousands of years ago.

But as he walked he critiqued himself, and found himself critiquing his master. He had dreams, Darth Maul did—to be a Sith Lord, to build a lightsaber perfect for himself, to spill Jedi blood on the floor of their temple. And Darth Sidious had not even given his apprentice a Sith name yet. He knew that most beings were born with names, but he as a Sith had to deserve and earn one. He was growing impatient.

A nearby presence spiked into the Force_. Jedi!_ Maul clamped down on his own Force presence, hiding it, although inside he was raging and anticipating. He climbed the black, rocky ground to his right and crouched behind a spire of volcanic rock. _Jedi!_ Darth Sidious had set Maul the task of remaining on Iridonia until he was picked up again, but the apprentice was used to twists to his missions. It would be easy to survive on this planet; it was inhabited. Perhaps the Jedi were a test, an added bonus!

They walked into view below. The two male humans wearing brown cloaks talked calmly to one another. One was bearded, the other clean-shaven and wearing a Padawan braid in his hair.

The older one was saying, "Don't worry, Obi-Wan. Watchman Leemic Bindo doesn't carry a commlink, but we will find her."

So they were here to pick up a child. Then their heads turned as a third presence made itself known, as if the Jedi Watchman were crying out. Obi-Wan and his master began to jump off the path and through the field of rocks, away from Maul's hiding place.

The pair inspired foreign feelings in the Sith. Even this Jedi Master seemed more dedicated to his Padawan than Darth Sidious was to his apprentice. The Jedi reassured instead of abandoned. Could that be a sign that Sidious was not as loyal to Maul as he should be? What other comparison did the Zabrak have?

Maul was unarmed and young—and easily forgot those things as his enemies turned their backs to him. He started after them, banishing his traitorous thoughts for more familiar ones of determination and anger. He could not, though, shake the question that had arisen outside his hatred of the Jedi. They had nearly destroyed the Sith-- therefore Maul had sworn revenge. But what if his hated enemy were more loyal to their own than Sidious was to him? What did that mean about which was the more worthwhile faction?

Nevertheless, these particular Jedi were in his sights as targets.

The next rock he placed his foot on moved, but not as if his step had caused it to slide down the hillside. It rose up, revealing the pebble-strewn head of a merk. Maul stepped off of it and down the slope. To his right, though, farther out of the sight of the Jedi, he saw a foreboding smoothly paved-looking surface; a pack of the hunkered down, camouflaged merks.

The SIth and the predators met each other's eyes.

With the Force Maul tore rocks from the ground and threw them at the merks. He aimed for their white eyes and heard some satisfying yelps. He moved twice as fast as the two-footed prey they were used to. As they ran forward he jumped over them, but this pack was wide; he landed on more flat horns. They tipped, revealing snapping teeth and claws that ripped into his boots. He lost balance for a moment and spread his arms. Another one of the creatures rammed against his back. He fell forward, cutting his gloved hand open on a sharp rock but succeeding in throwing the merk over his head onto a group of its pack-mates. Maul felt himself floundering in the creatures now. He tried to Force-jump away, but was seized around the wrist by a mouth full of fangs which cut into his wrist—he kicked the creature, and a bluish stain blossomed inside its chest. It went limp. He disengaged his wrist and hand from its teeth while gesturing with the other arm, a sweeping motion that cleared the area behind him of merks. He stepped into the empty area, breathing hard.

There were so many of the creatures in this area that he sensed the ground as alive. This was a nest of them; he had probably been set down near it purposefully. He did not lament. He channeled his rage to keep himself alive. Nor would he run; that would not satisfy the bloodlust he felt. Another merk charged him. He lifted it with the Force, and slammed it into two more creatures with enough force to kill the three of them; he could see that some had hunkered down again, unwilling to face him. However, more were slinking around behind him. As soon as he concentrated to move the group of them with the Force, another approached from another side. His skin chafed on the merk's scales as he flipped one over with his hands and punched its fragile underbelly; again internal bleeding spread a purple haze across its gray skin. He flung some of them behind him away. The way looked clear. More were retreating than circling now.

Then he sensed their minds shift. In what little intelligence they had, all of it focused toward the hunt and the dynamics of the pack, excitement blared. The alpha male was coming.

Maul franticly looked around for another wave of merks. The ones around him, though, stayed still. They did not hunker down, but stood and watched him with their calm, white eyes. He stared back.

He continued to glare unblinkingly as the spire he had hid behind just moments before shuddered and shook, spraying rock which had accumulated around it into the sky. Maul stepped back. The entire small mountain shivered too, and then in a gigantic upheaval revealed its true identity. A fleshy merk stood there, a barely recognizable one at least three times as tall as the Zabrak. Its dark gray skin was inset with rocks and boulder-sized scales. Its horns had grown tall and fused, leaving it with an unprotected back, but with a solid, fifteen-meter long spire on its head.

It looked down at Darth Maul.

He thought about tearing the mountain from beneath it, about stabbing its viewport-sized eye with the Force, and about gracefully retreating—

Then he sensed the incoming ship. He moved fluidly into a martial arts stance and glared even more fiercely at the alpha merk. He ingratiated himself into its primitive thoughts—its admirable rage at the invasion of its pack's territory, its sluggishness offsetting hunger—and attempted to calm them. It was like batting at a rancor with a fly swatter, but for the essential moments, it worked. Maul almost felt the thoughts of the animal as his own.

He did not choose to feel the turbolaser bolts as they speared through the merk's side. He came completely back to himself in time to see Sidious' ship curve around the alpha merk's pillarous legs and land precariously on the hillside. The smaller merks growled and hissed.

Fast enough that Maul could not be sure how he had gotten there Darth Sidious was out of the ship, his elegant, blood-red lightsaber live in his hands. The elderly human—the Sith Lord—stood in the shadow of the alpha merk. It barely noticed him, and lifted a thick leg to move toward Maul. But Sidious lifted the lightsaber over his head. Although the underside of the monster's neck was meters above him, he waved the laser sword in a slashing motion.

Purple blood dripped around Sidious as the creature's neck began to tear.

Maul turned away from the stench and the ground-shaking _thud _when the merk fell. He and Sidious were left standing on a paved square of merks hidden under their carapaces, with the shape of the land forever altered and the corpse beside them releasing clouds of steam into the cold air.

Maul walked over to his master and went down on one knee, head bowed. He had seen the wide smile on Sidious' face, and it frightened him slightly. He did not often see Sidious in action like this—nor feel his Force presence as volatile coils of disapproval, violence, and satisfaction. Maul knew that he had failed.

Sidious looked at Maul and said nothing. Then he quickly hit the Zabrak across the face with the hand that held the lightsaber. Pain flared across Maul's cheek, dangerously close to his eye. He did not flinch or otherwise respond.

"Come," Sidious spoke in his quiet, croaking voice.

Maul followed him onto the ship. They did not speak for some time, and Maul was sure that the silence was supposed to be one in which he felt shame at having to be rescued.

He had lost the fight, lost track of the Jedi—he was ashamed indeed, and would be more so in the future. But the unsettling question was answered.

His master did watch over him.

**--/--**

**Here is a timeline for the reader's benefit and mine which places the chapters of this fanfic in context with each other and with published material. All canon info is from Wookieepedia.**

**54 BBY-Darth Maul's birth **

**Chapter 12**

**Chapter 5**

**Chapter 10**

**Chapter 9**

**The Tattooing (Chapter 13)**

**Chapter 7**

**Chapter 1**

**Chapter 2; Maul is given his name.**

**Chapter 3**

**Chapter 14**

**Black Sun mission (_Darth Maul_; comic book), chapter 6 and chapter 4**

**Lommite Limited mission (_Saboteu_r; e-book)**

**Maul vs. Lorn Pavan, Darsha Assant and I-5 (Shadowhunter; novel)**

**Chapter 8**

**32BBY-Battle at Naboo (_The Phantom Menace_) (Chapter 11)**


	10. Blinded

_Author's note: I'm not sure where this one takes place timeline-wise. This chapter is considerably shorter than the others, and future ones will probably be under 1000 words. Other fics which could fit in this collection instead appear as drabbles in Silver Sky 1138's fic which is conveniently called "Collections". They're worth looking at. _

* * *

He wakes up blind. For a moment he is utterly confused as he sits up, silk sliding away from scarlet skin. His eyes feel open, but the world is black, without even the white miasmas which appear when he looks at the insides of his eyelids.

The Force still exists everywhere. It still whispers of dangers, even if they are now as mundane as staircases or walls. He follows its currents, the vision it lays like a targeting grid over the blackness. He dresses and leaves his room as on any other day, although the confusion remains, manifested as tentative movements and the occasional stumble.

At least it is not animals, this time. It is not a blatant attack which Sidious chooses to test him with.

If Lord Sidious chooses to take his sight, he thinks, for the rest of his life, he will not speak a word of protest. It is Sidious' to take.

The currents of the Force and the smell of hot circuitry lead him down the hallway outside his quarters. This is a route often taken, and his feet know to keep to the catwalks. But he is nervous.

The Force whispers, _Droids in the doorway. _It does not use anything like words to convey the movements he should use, the slide to the left so that he can keep out of the oncoming line of fire, but nevertheless, the Sith apprentice follows invisible lines and _moves_.

Blasterfire assaults his ears with staccato screams. At first, more fear than usual rises in the darkness. But he remembers training blindfolded or helmed in the past. This is simply the next step. _Four droids_, the Force tells him. No make and model, but _neck joints, knee joints, _this _wire, blind spot–_

He takes the first droid apart.

* * *

Darth Sidious, watching from a balcony, wonders if perhaps he should truly obscure the apprentice's sight. Orange eyes could be gouged out, left as pink scar tissue or as another black accent on the marked face. How would that change the way the apprentice was perceived? Would it increase the fear he feeds on, or make him appear a cripple? That is not the intended effect for this one.

Sidious knows that a long night of bargaining with Republic senators makes it very likely that he is, at this very moment, taking his anger out on his apprentice by beginning a training sequence he had not planned on running.

_Good_, he thinks. _Let him learn to deal with the truly unexpected._

But no, he will not take the Zabrak's eyes.

* * *

On the floor, the apprentice tucks and roll to the floor, recovering with a push of his legs and a Force push to send the droid whose chopping hand he just avoided to slam into two of its fellows and, finally, a wall. That particular battle droid learned well; it did not try to fire its second wrist-mounted blaster after the apprentice detonated the power pack of the first one as it fired, shattering the droid's metal hand. He was into the Force now, suffusing into it, raging with his eyes blackened. But after the next step he takes he is forced into thinking more slowly. He has backed himself up against the wall and instinct tells him to look around, although the movement is useless. It distracts him from the Force.

A blasterbolt digs into the leather of his boot and then spears the wall, and he jumps straight upward. He grabs the catwalk and swings like a monkey to the railing above it, across the gulf of the room from Sidious. He does not sense his Master, because Sidious does not allow it. The apprentice pauses for a split second and drops down again into the air, into a tight flip designed to both keep him out of the corner, nearer to the door, and to crush the chest of the battle droid he chooses to land on. This maneuver would be successful, except that halfway through the brief flight, Sidious returns the apprentice's vision.

One might say that he dissipated the cloud of the dark side, or that he released the Force's obscuration of the apprentice's corneas.

Flashes of light and the sudden existence of the visible world shock the apprentice. His perfect movements falter mid air, and his surprise is evident. But he lands with only a tiny misstep, and finishes the fight.

Again, he can see. He now knows, too, that he can survive without seeing, although the thought of the blackness quickens his heartsbeat with fear.

With the lesson born of capriciousness over, he returns to his room to await the next task. Only once, when alone, does he pass a hand over his eyes, appreciating the sight of the creases on his blackened palm.


	11. This is not a Degenerate Star

_A/N: This is not a story. This is what skywalker05 was doing when she should've been taking notes in class. My mind just wondered…into second person POV _this_? Yeah. I'm scared too, heh. For one thing, it's too full of 'to be' verbs. For another, my idle thoughts should not just naturally drift toward Darth Maul, should they. _

XI

You aren't a name. You're a role—apprentice—or a spectrum—scarlet and onyx and gold. He pits you against animals because they charge, frenzied, perfect speeding traps for you to dodge. You practice grace. You bleed, limp, keep silent, kill, heal through burning wrath.

Are you _happy_? Yes. Enthusiastically, ecstatically, addictively. You're addicted to death, the dark side, your own faultless movements. There is nothing else, because you are always commanded, pointed like a missile at whatever foe you are given. Sometimes the foes are misfortunate enough to be made of meat and bone, blood and brain.

And so you fight. You rend and smell the ozone and do not have many smiles to model your own on, so your eyes burn, pain layered on bravery on fightlust like the burning shells of a degenerate star.

The Jedi nearly tell you that they see you as a monster. The Force broadcasts; the child screams—rarely do you see your own face, but their thoughts, the self-sparks of the Master on the ground and the Padawan above, are not rational. You are not a man to them, not a species or motivation or name, but a mask and a weapon. They are wise. To see you as anything else would quicken their deaths.


	12. Pavlov's Dog

12—Pavlov's Dog

"_You become responsible forever for what you've tamed." __Antoine de Saint-Exupery_

The apprentice learned to move from felinxes. Soon after the arrival at the Works, Sidious brought a crate of the fluffy-furred, multicolored animals into the wide room that served as the child's nursery, and left them alone. After some time of hesitancy, the mammalian instinct of copying to learn began. Sidious would come in to find the apprentice crouched on the floor beside the cot, shoulders hunched, head low, brown eyes wide and intent. He used the shadows the Works' scarce electricity offered. With every step one of the animals took, he would match it, back straight and shoulders rolling, touching the heels and then the short fingers of his hands to the black tile floor. Less fluidly, his knees followed, step after step in silence but for slightest shush of fabric. After a few days, he learned how to move to cancel the sound out entirely.

The seven felinxes ate separately from Sidious and the apprentice, but they slept with the latter, curled up against the crook of his legs or in front of his face, brown or black or white fur against red skin.

Sidious took the child away from that room sometimes, of course, for other training: reading, writing, anatomy, rote killing. The Zabrak would learn the basics of his trade before the concept of morality or disgust set in, so that they would not be a complication when he matured. Once, they returned to the room to find the animals asleep in a pile. One lanky, black-furred individual remained away, padding around near its fellows, and the apprentice wished silence into the Force as soon as he saw that one. Sidious stilled, standing in the doorway so that it would not shut and hiss.

The apprentice dropped to all fours near the corner of the low bed. He moved around it like a felinx, silent, eyes fixed on his pretend prey. Step, step—he wanted to sneak up on the one who was awake. He had learned silence from it, and so—

The felinx sniffed at one of its siblings' ears. The ear twitched.

The apprentice's approach was hidden for a moment by the dim light and the bed. Then again in view he stalked forward, breathing silently in through his mouth, a few handspans away from the prowling, oblivious animal.

The apprentice made another fluid move forward, and clapped his left hand on the floor.

The slapping sound sent the animal onto alert. Tail raised, eyes wide, all paws left the floor—the felinx jumped, both to face its foe and to put a sibling's rousing head between it and the Zabrak. Ears and eyes perked up from the pile and some of the other felinxes trotted away from the group, flowing like water made flesh. Sidious stifled a laugh.

Happiness flowed from the Zabrak. He had bested his teacher.

Somewhat to Sidious' surprise, though, he did not move. He crouched and watched the young, black felinx look at him, then scurry away, managing to look affronted. The apprentice seemed lost in thought for a moment.

Then he slid his hands to the side, adjusted to stand on the balls of his feet, and jumped.

He succeeded in spinning to face the opposite direction, scattering the group of felinxes completely, and hurting a finger enough that he shook his hand for a moment. Again, he looked lost in thought, surely replaying the animal's move in his mind, admiring not the grace but the effectiveness, the practicality, of such a response.

Sidious decided that the boy needed to start learning such maneuvers while standing up properly.

The child was growing older, and the last of the things Sidious needed his mind half-formed for was the Orders.

Sidious would speak numbers in Iridonian. The apprentice spoke mostly Basic with a smattering of simple Bocce, like most galactic children learned, and Huttese, like most warriors did. Sidious found using his native language to be delightfully ironic, however, and useful because these words were less likely to be heard on a daily basis in the world outside. Each number, he taught the apprentice, meant a command. Move, freeze, speak or don't speak, attack. Programmed actions for a droid bodyguard. For their missions together, the apprentice thought. He never found out the true reason, even as joint excursions became rarer and rarer. But enthusiasm was built into every action, so that at the snap of a word the apprentice would move as if he had no other moment in which to live or affect his surroundings.

If he acted out of turn or incorrectly, Sidious would run lightning through the small body just enough so that the apprentice understood. A correct action was rewarded with the lack of pain.

And so the words became engrained.

For the last action the apprentice learned, one dependant not on a numbered Order but on a mein and a sound which would prove most important to his life, Sidious woke him up in the middle of the night. He bared his teeth for a moment, saw the familiar face, and relaxed, felinxes retreating en mass off the bed. The apprentice sat up.

With a snap of sound and neon, Sidious' blood-red lightsaber flared to life from his hand. He said dully, "Kill a felinx."

Waking up in the middle of the night was not unusual for the Sith-in-training, but this disruption of the pack-analog was. The apprentice hesitated a moment before half-standing, then having a different idea and raising one hand. He took a life with a twist of the Force.

The lightsaber retracted and the apprentice blinked away afterimages. Sidious walked a few paces away, activated the weapon again. "Kill a felinx."

They did this six times. One of the animals got away, slipping around the warped bottom edge of the door.

The seventh time, the blade turned on and Sidious said "Kill." just as he had before.

Shriek, thrum, ozone tang—the apprentice, twitchy now and awake, looked frantically around for a remaining target, sniffing through the Force for the distant survivor. The command had been to kill _instantly_, and to snuff life he needed life—his breathing grated, frustrated, as the ingrained urge to act pounded through him in adrenaline and stronger, stranger chemicals—the one vivid sensation of life in the room held the lightsaber—

Sidious felt Force power batter against his own like a moth on the casing of a light a moment before the apprentice leapt off the bed. He swung the lightsaber, but the apprentice had been expecting that; his bare feet thumped to the floor centimeters away from the blade's arc and he ducked inside the swing's afterglow. He stopped there for a second, arms reaching, uncertain yet of how to kill a man from this distance, this quickly—Sidious stepped back. The apprentice matched his movements, the Force reaching for his throat, and the Sith Master thumbed the lightsaber off.

In relative darkness the apprentice sighed, tension releasing, and retreated a few steps. He looked like the child that he was for a moment, frightened by his actions and the lengths to which he would carry out orders. He looked, for the first time, frightened by punishment as if he were not sure he deserved it.

"Good," said Sidious. "Good. We will practice this in the future."

He departed, gathering the bodies of the animals up in his arms before he did so and taking them with him. The apprentice padded back to the bed, caught cloth between his fingers as he moved to lie down. The sheet was warm with a felinx's body heat.

If one could have seen him from an outside perspective, they would have seen confusion in his face and sense. _Is attacking Lord Sidious praiseworthy? Does this heat matter, now that that which produces it is dead? Will my days feel different without companions? Will learning? Will I retain their flow?_

He did not articulate these thoughts, however. The specific intent to kill was fading away, but it was replaced with a new one: the need to sleep, for he did not know when he could be woken up again or what task he would be asked to perform.

Ever after, the thrilling sound of a lightsaber hum would give him the wrath paired with lethality.


	13. Inscription

**13**

_Pain equals loyalty._

Why does pain equal loyalty?

_It cuts away the weakness and sickness that it replicates._

Loyalty symbolizes the inability to think for oneself.

_I accept pain from you, master, because it perfects me._

Sidious closed his mind, ended the dialogue. He thought, I mark you to frighten our foes. To show that I manipulate you as well as them. Oh how it references itself.

As Darth Sidious listened to his apprentice's thoughts, he twisted another sliver-thin needle into the already livid skin and laughed under his breath.

_Fin._


	14. Foresight

14-- Farsight

* * *

Red dust, kicked up once by armies, once by Sith Academy students, again by Revan, again today, blew across the cragged landscape, and Darth Maul and Darth Sidious blinked it away. They stood before the mouth of a tomb on this dusty world Korriban, listening to the howling wind, but more to the low growls and whispers of the Force's latent (but oh so ready here, mewling for release --) darker side.

Sidious' reedy voice wormed into the silence. "Darth Revan walked here once. The records she made tell of a weapon forged by Sith alchemy, a knife which could cut time as well as skin. You will retrieve this artifact from the tomb for me."

"Yes, my master."

**The apprentice walked **out of the cave some hours later. In one hand he held a disk of silver, an ornament made to fit the hand and ringed with four swept-back blades. The folds of his cloak over his right shoulder were shiny with blood, and his Force sense roiled with memories of ambushes, of turbulence in the cave-quiet depths heralding the approach of creatures bearing unknown poisons, demigorgons he had slain.

He presented the weapon to Sidious.

The Force flowed around the artifact as soon as the Sith Master touched it. He sensed a flare of power, a beacon as if the Jedi Order were all dim night. Then he saw a battle, Darth Maul against a young Jedi, and he saw the outcome, his apprentice cast down into a pit, the Jedi taking none of the dark power that he had been so close to receiving from his pride and anger but rushing to his weak and dying mentor's side instead.

This meshed with other visions Sidious had experienced before. Maul would die, the Sith Lord knew, by a Jedi's hand, after serving his purpose—after disrupting the comfortable, material worldview of the noble Republic versus the greedy Trade Federation with the subtle, supernatural third party of the Sith. These visions were not all that the artifact would grant, though—simply a side effect of interest.

He asked his apprentice, "And what did you see?"

Maul replied, "A confidant Jedi Master, hewn by a red lightsaber." The thin lips quirked in a quiet, savored smile that burst more strongly in the Force than even in his bright eyes. Sidious smiled too, at the coming triumph and at his apprentice's delusion, and let a laugh escape him to cackle among the rocks.


	15. Predatory

**15—Predatory**

Darth Sidious, the Sith Lord's apprentice thought, could travel to any world and find there someone willing to do what he told them.

On Utapau it was the stable-keeper, a squat little squeaking creature that stood on the edge of the moss-encrusted rock ledge as if the gray stone might not crumble away at any moment. The apprentice, looking over the Utai's head, thought of falling into the sinkhole abyss, through the vast crumbling nothingness toward the blue-glint water. He would unclip the grappling gun from his belt and shut his eyes against the slicing wind, and use the Force to find the ideal place to sink the hook into the rock. He would climb to solid ground.

The Utai would just fall.

Sidious caught the apprentice's eye, and together they walked into the striped shade of the varactyl stable.

The arcing, rib-roofed pavilion smelled of the moistness that came from the split ends of hay left to dry in the sun. Little there reminded the apprentice of the metallic, ancient underbelly of Coruscant that he was used to. That was why he had come here; to be accustomed to a more rural area such as this. Sidious would leave no potentially useful aspect of life out of the apprentice's training.

The Utai ushered the Sith in, then left them to move on their own along the curving paths between the varactyl stalls. The creatures also called dragonmounts lounged behind low stone walls, their long, feathered tails and muscled legs curving across the leaf-strewn floors. Some were deep-sea-green, the tips of their tails and feathered crests shading to brilliant purple, while others glistened bronze-brown, with poisonous-looking blood-red feathers. The apprentice's prior reading had taught him that the green varactyls were female, and usually larger than the brown males. Neither gender was known to be aggressive; despite their claws and hooked beaks, varactyls were herbivorous, relatively low on the Utapauan food chain.

When Sidious did not give any orders, the apprentice approached the creatures on his own. Their intelligent, black eyes turned to look at him as he approached, animal Force presences showing minds that categorized him as neither _predator _nor _food._ When he came within arms' reach of the halfwall, the varactyls pushed their beaks toward him. He reached out gloved hands to them, smoothing down feathers to grow used to their drag. The not-unpleasant musky smell of the creatures settled like a taste at the back of his mouth.

One male varactyl, its skull as long as the apprentice's torso, bumped its beak against his side. He turned to find the creature looking down at him intently, almost purposefully meeting his eyes. He pushed the heavy beak away and it pushed back, an angerless resistance against his hands, a contact that was a friendly overture while also assuring that the creature could crush his wrist between the horn scissors of its mouth with just a turn of its neck. No antagonism, just practicality.

He chose this one to ride.

**Sidious' method of **teaching was often to give the apprentice something new—a craft, a weapon—and after basic instruction on how to make it function, let him teach himself. The same held true with controlling creatures.

He guided the varactyl along the trails on the rock shelves ringing the sink hole, growing used to its rocking stride, and when the bronze beast turned to follow the trail up the sheer face of gray rock he let it have its head.

The climb was vertiginous, and the apprentice added a new bit of data to what he knew about the Utapau natives. He felt himself tense, pushing his knees against the varactyl's sides and keeping his spine straight even as the thought of trusting the now-horizontal saddle backboard as the only thing between him and the brine-scented air sent nervous alarms pinging within his brain. Anyone who rode these creatures often would be strong.

The path leveled out and they traveled for little less than an hour, then turned back. At the moment when the varactyl curved to turn at the edge of a cliff over grown with weeds and vines, another animal burst out from below the cliff face.

The wind of its passing sent warm zephyrs lashing against the apprentice's head and face. The creature was wild; he had sensed it hunting earlier and disregarded it as unrelated to him. It was a dactillion, a sail-winged creature with four spindly legs that dangled down as it swept overhead. The varactyl gave out a resonant honk and reared. The apprentice hung on and grimaced as the varactyl's weight shifted onto its columnar hind legs.

The dactillion landed among the vegetation in front of them, its crested beak sweeping through the air. The apprentice's attention was drawn to sparks of light in the Force that drew his gaze to the ground. A nest of varactyls sheltered beneath a ledge there, four young ones less than a meter long. The apprentice's mount backed up, perhaps wary of the return of the mother varactyl. But no female appeared. The dactillion poked its beak into the nest and withdrew one wriggling varactyl, swallowing it whole before looking at the domestic male varactyl and hissing as if to incite it.

The exchange fascinated the apprentice. Only on a world with such large animals and literal niche habitats such as the sinkholes could such a conflict take place within sight of sentients' communities and not disturb them. Interesting too, for reasons the apprentice could not name, was the dactillion's ruthlessness, the way it drove its prey against the wall of their nest.

It had none of the sympathetic personalization that most sentients exhibited, none of the empathy. No desire to spare the young varactyls _because _they were young. But though he himself would kill on command in an instant, some sentient remnant remained, and so he stilled his mount when it began to turn to continue on the path back down the cliff.

He watched, curious, not out of any sardonic amusement but to engulf himself in the question of whether he ought to interfere.

One varactyl escape the nest. The emerald snake-shape of it swarmed up the hillside behind the nest. The dactillion's beak tipped upward to pluck at the air, judging its now-moving target's place on the sun-warmed rock. The varactyl turned to present the predator its raised tail-spikes, and although the dactillion's beak seemed just to brush over the spine-concealing feathers, it flinched back with its entire thin-limbed body.

The identification of the sole remaining varactyl hatchling changed in the apprentice's mind then. Once _prey_, it became _dactillion's opponent_. He had felt the same shift in his own battles before, when a high-tech droid or crafty mercenary that Sidious had set against him proved to him that it would take thought, not just wrath, to kill.

The dactillion had a primitive mind unable to perform such a shift. There was an unfairness in that.

The apprentice did not think at length on this; it was an easy thing to dig his knees into the yielding flesh between the dragonmount's ribs so that it lurched forward. It honked, a resonant sound that engulfed and was engulfed by the sinkhole. The dactillion flinched again and raised its bony wings. The apprentice pressed the varactyl foreword, its mane of feathers shaking before him like the flood-tipped spears of an army, and in a moment the dactillion spread its wings and lunged away off the crag, dipping and floating away like a loosely-constructed kite.

The surviving hatchling scuttled up the rocks and into a tuft of grass above the nest. The apprentice turned his varactyl toward the stables.


End file.
